Looking back at the #GoShareTenerife media trip with GoTimeshare and Pearly Grey

As those of you who follow the GoTimeshare blog surely know, April was a fun and busy month for us, with the #GoShareTenerife media trip in full swing.

We had a great time, achieved a lot, and even learned a great deal.And we’re happy to share all that with you in this post, as we look back at the whole experience.

We would like to stress that this was a media trip, not a blog trip. Blogging did play an important part in the trip, but it was ultimately a small part, compared to all the social media platforms and channels we used to get the maximum reach.

The goal of this trip was for Simon Turkas, our travelling blogger, to team up with timeshare resort Pearly Grey, organise a trip to Tenerife, and tell all about it to as many people as possible on the social media.

To get there, we had to start off with a good deal of planning and preparation. Gemma, the head receptionist at Pearly Grey was brilliant and arranged 10 trips over a 6 day period. All the trips and excursions were sponsored for us, as was board and lodging at Pearly Grey, and Poul’s Auto, the local rent-a-car company even gave us a free car for the week.

As Gemma got busy organising and securing sponsorships, we insisted that she made it clear to partnering businesses that they weren’t giving us free tickets, but that we were entering into a joint promotion venture. They had to understand that the videos, photos and posts that would come from the trip would provide an unbelievable reach that would stay online for years to come.

Another important thing we did was to drum up support for the trip before it even started. We visited and emailed the Tenerife Tourism board and the local tourism department well in advance, telling them about the trip and the hashtag #GoShareTenerife, and asking them if there was anything they wanted us to share or promote during our week there.
Simon also wrote a blog post before he set off on the trip. This was then shared and promoted through not just his own social media channels but also on the social media accounts belonging to John Beckley, RDO, GoTimeshare and others. Even the local tourist board was sharing our content before the trip had started, which shows how important it is to spread the word early and get good traction from the start.

Once the trip had started, we got busy posting live updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+. We also took lots of extra photos and even video that we produced and uploaded to YouTube at a later stage.

As it happened, few of the companies that provided attractions on our trip were on social media, or if they were, then they weren’t active at all. This means we unfortunately could not really count on them to effectively promote the event on their channels. Still, this was good opportunity to get them started. John flew in a day before the media trip and hosted a social media masterclass workshop, specifically showing these businesses how to get involved in the trip and also the basics of managing their social media presence.

Much of the retweeting and Instagram reposts came from the Adeje Town Hall, Tourism Tenerife and from the Canary Islands tourism board. These bodies were instrumental in promoting the different live updates we were putting out because they already had a solid follower base on social media.

We are particularly pleased with the response because our goal is to foster this kind cooperation way beyond a one-off trip. The idea here is that GoTimeshare, Simon Turkas and the tourism bodies all enter into into a long term relationship that grows over time as they promote each other, focus on what they are putting in, and end up each receiving much more.

We were also very encouraged by the overall reach achieved during the trip. This can be hard to measure accurately when a lot of the activity happens on social networks beyond one’s control. But just as an example, this vine post got over 40,000 replays.

Take a look at the #GoShareTenerife Pinterest board and YouTube playlist to see more of what we’ve been up to, and stay tuned as we get ready for our next media trip adventure.